Introduction

I am a linguist / Bible translator who is just helping a team finish a Scripture selection (New Testament plus 8% of the Old Testament) ready for publication for a cultural community in Asia. It's taken us over twenty years to do this, including learning the language (plus a couple of the major languages in the country), establishing a literacy program, training local (mother-tongue) translators, establishing a Scripture promotion program, etc., etc.

Now I'm starting this new blog to pursue an interest in making more Biblical materials more available to students of the Scriptures all over the world. I'm concerned that it often seems that the Western countries are the "gate-keepers" of the original (Hebrew and Greek) texts, as well as the reputable English translations that local translators often want to use as resources for study and for translating into their own languages. Often copyrights or expensive charges prevent students from the rest of the world from having legal access to these helpful materials.

I think there's a growing (but still very small) number of people who recognize this problem and who, rather than focussing on the negative aspects of this discussion, want to take positive action to make quality Bible resource materials more freely available.

Hopefully you'll join me in thinking through some of these issues over the next weeks and months, and coming up with an action plan or how we (yes, me and YOU) can make a useful contribution. I guess the steps might be: 1/ try to define the problem more clearly, 2/ identify what Bible study resources are currently freely available, 3/identify what resources still need to be made available, 4/ plan how this might be achieved (this involves both data resources and software resources), 5/ see which part of this picture we might be able to contribute something tangible to. Please do contribute your comments, suggestions, objections, and anything else that will spur on this area of research.